January 17, 2013 – The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has now asked Lance Armstrong to return the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics reports AP. The U.S. Olympic Committee is entrusted with recuperating the medal from Armstrong. This follows last year’s UCI decision to strip Armstrong of his seven Tour de France victories based on evidence of massive doping as presented by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in its reasoned decision. The IOC waited until some bureaucratic delays expired and has now moved to collect the medal. Various sporting authorities have now annulled all of Armstrong’s results since 1998.

Armstrong finished third in the ITT at Sydney behind U.S. Postal Service teammate Vyacheslav Ekimov of Russia in first and Jan Ullrich of Germany in second. Spanish rider Abraham Olano Manzano finished fourth in the Sydney ITT, but the IOC indicates that it will not re-allocate the medal and the record books will now simply be left blank as to who won bronze in that event. The Tour de France record books for the years 1999–2005 have similarly now been left blank, showing no winner.

The timing of this announcement – on the same day that Armstrong’s doping confession is expected to be aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network – is apparently a complete coincidence. Armstrong has vehemently denied doping for many years.

Read more HERE.